Daily Comment on News and Issues of Interest to Michigan Lawyers

03/04/2013

Ms. Bader Ginsburg Conducts A Clinic On Persuasive Advocacy

Jeffrey Toobin's admiring profile of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in The New Yorker (sub. req.) asserts that she is the Court's most accomplished litigator. Sure, he says, Chief Justice John Roberts argued more cases before the Court but "most of them were of modest significance." Whatever.

What will resonate in the Toobin piece for those of us women who lived through the heyday of the "women's movement" (that is what it was called, right?) is this passage:

There is some irony in Ginsburg’s reputation for reserve, because she is,
by far, the current Court’s most accomplished litigator. Before Chief Justice
John G. Roberts, Jr., became a judge, he argued more cases than Ginsburg did
before the Justices, but most of them were disputes of modest significance.
Ginsburg, during the nineteen-seventies, argued several of the most important
women’s-rights cases in the Court’s history. Her halting style in private never
prevented her from vigorous advocacy before the bench. In those days, Ginsburg
was a pioneer. When, as a forty-three-year-old Columbia Law School professor,
she made a full argument before the Supreme Court, in 1976, Chief Justice Warren
E. Burger stumbled when introducing her. “Mrs. Bader? Mrs. Ginsburg?” he said.
(Female advocates, to say nothing of those with multi-part names, were a rarity
in those days.) Later in the same case, Justice Potter Stewart made a similar
mistake, calling her “Mrs. Bader.”

On one occasion, when she brought some female students to the courtroom with
her, they urged her to insist that the Justices address her with the novel
honorific Ms. “I decided not to make a fuss about it,” Ginsburg told me. “That
wasn’t the reason I was there.”

Comments

Ms. Bader Ginsburg Conducts A Clinic On Persuasive Advocacy

Jeffrey Toobin's admiring profile of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in The New Yorker (sub. req.) asserts that she is the Court's most accomplished litigator. Sure, he says, Chief Justice John Roberts argued more cases before the Court but "most of them were of modest significance." Whatever.

What will resonate in the Toobin piece for those of us women who lived through the heyday of the "women's movement" (that is what it was called, right?) is this passage:

There is some irony in Ginsburg’s reputation for reserve, because she is,
by far, the current Court’s most accomplished litigator. Before Chief Justice
John G. Roberts, Jr., became a judge, he argued more cases than Ginsburg did
before the Justices, but most of them were disputes of modest significance.
Ginsburg, during the nineteen-seventies, argued several of the most important
women’s-rights cases in the Court’s history. Her halting style in private never
prevented her from vigorous advocacy before the bench. In those days, Ginsburg
was a pioneer. When, as a forty-three-year-old Columbia Law School professor,
she made a full argument before the Supreme Court, in 1976, Chief Justice Warren
E. Burger stumbled when introducing her. “Mrs. Bader? Mrs. Ginsburg?” he said.
(Female advocates, to say nothing of those with multi-part names, were a rarity
in those days.) Later in the same case, Justice Potter Stewart made a similar
mistake, calling her “Mrs. Bader.”

On one occasion, when she brought some female students to the courtroom with
her, they urged her to insist that the Justices address her with the novel
honorific Ms. “I decided not to make a fuss about it,” Ginsburg told me. “That
wasn’t the reason I was there.”